


Adaptation

by emeraldfrog3



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Gen, Modern Character in Thedas, Modern Girl in Thedas, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-14
Updated: 2016-09-25
Packaged: 2018-05-06 14:36:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5420801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emeraldfrog3/pseuds/emeraldfrog3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What would happen if you or I woke up in Thedas? No knowledge of how you got there, no way to return home. Just having to watch and adapt, right? Or be brave enough to try to help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Arrival

**Author's Note:**

> Not my normal storytelling style but the idea would not let me go, so I might as well share it right? I don't have a plan for this, so it might be randomly updated as I write. It is a bit of an experiment and an exercise in first-person writing. Please, leave comments and let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions.

You know the feeling, usually when you are driving somewhere that you know by heart--like home or work--and you find yourself surprised because you are already there? As if the journey did not happen. I am sure it happens to us all. Our brains just turn off because we are not doing anything special. That was what it was like that day.

It was just my normal day off routine: cook, clean, read, draw, facebook, emails, writing, in one configuration or another. I was doing what I always did. And then... Then I was not. I was surprised but not overly startled to find myself in the woods.

When did I decide to take a walk? Not that it was a bad idea as I loved the woods. I took a deep breath in, relishing the scent of rotting leaves and wood that I was familiar with, but there was a touch of something different in the air too. The trees were familiar but dense. I must have wandered off the path. Still something pulled at the back of my mind, something was not right.

I could hear water. Not like the stream, I would hike by. It was like waves on the lake, but somehow not quite that. My heart started to pound inside my chest finally, as the oddity of this whole situation began to sink in. I took another deep breath and pushed my fear response back, calming my heartbeat. There was nothing I could do but to figure out where I was. That thought kept me in control and I started walking towards the sound of water.

“Briny…” The sound of my own voice startled me. It was rough and unused, like talking for the first time after having a sore throat.

“It smells briny? Odd.” I took another deep breath as the trees thinned and I found myself on the top of a bluff. I gasped as I looked down the twenty foot or more drop onto the rocks and waves. I fell to the ground, my head spinning with the heights and sudden panic that flooded over me again. This was not any woods that I had hiked in before.

“I am definitely not in Kansas anymore, Toto.”

I buried my face in my hands, pushing my glasses up to press hard against my eyes. I needed to stay calm. I was lost in a foreign place, not sure how I got there, but I had thought of such scenarios before. What if I was whisked away to another world by magic, through a wardrobe or a mirror? Or suddenly found out about a hidden world of magic alongside my everyday life and now I was part of it too? Whether there was magic here, or if it was another world, it didn’t matter. Unfortunately, I did not have a handsome guide to this place. I would still need to survive for the moment. To make it out alive, I had to stay calm. I took slow deep breaths and started making a list of what I would need short term.

“Water, shelter, food.” Once I looked after those things, I could figure out where I was. This would be just like the first ten minutes of a video game.

I looked back over the water. I had never been to the ocean but from the smell, I was fairly sure that this was it. I was overlooking a bay or a cove. I realized then that I was not sure of the difference in the two. Maybe size? It was strange not to be able to Google the answer right away. Hopefully, there was a stream nearby where I could set up a basic camp. The bluff was rocky enough that I might even find some caves.

I needed to find shelter soon. I couldn’t see the sun and had no idea how long I had until nightfall. I did not want to be exposed in the darkness of night. I shuttered at the thought of being alone in this strange place with no protection and began to scan the coastline.

A movement towards the open water caught my attention. There, sailing into the cove, a ship! A beautiful three-masted sailboat. Boat might not be the best word, and I definitely would not use that talking to any sailors. I would likely offend them. However, this ship was beautiful because it meant there were people aboard. Hopefully, people that would be able to help me. I decided to walk the beach and maybe they would see me, or, at least, I would find a stream.

Getting down to the beach was another issue. I had to go back into the trees to pick my way down where the drop was not so steep or long. I stood and took another careful look at the beach before heading towards, what I hoped, would be an easier way down to the water. I slid down the hill on wet leaves in a few places before I decided I needed a walking stick for this hike. Without one, I might break an ankle or worse. I took some time to find a branch the proper size for what I needed. It made the climb much easier and slowly, I felt like I was getting closer to my target, as well as incredibly dirty at the same time. The sound of the waves was growing louder so I figured it had been worth it.

I was still in the trees when I stumbled across a stream, quite literally. I was very glad that I had my walking stick then because there had been thick ferns covering the water and the banks were lined with very soft mud. The stick sunk into the ground before I stepped into the muck, so I was able to keep to the firm ground as I turned down towards the ocean.

I blinked hard as I came out of the brush, squinting as I stepped into the sunlight. The beach was still rocky here, but more stones than boulders under my feet. I shielded my eyes to look around.

“Hello, pretty lass. Are you all alone out here?”

A thickly accented male voice startled me and I turned to see a man that fit every stereotypical image of a pirate. He had dark, greasy hair pulled back from his face and a scruffy beard. His skin was dark and rough from salt and sun. And his clothes! High leather boots, patched pants, a long leather coat, and a billowy once-white shirt; like a character out of a movie. All that was missing was a three-cornered hat. Before I could think about it or stop myself, I felt my head nodding yes to his question.

Then the world went black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made a number of intentional references to some of my favorite stories and games. How many can you find?
> 
> This was a lot of fun to write, and I figure I have at least two more chapters that need to be written soon. Please, I would love feedback because this is a style I don't normally use.


	2. Caged

When I woke up, everything hurt.

I couldn’t help but moan as the pain intensified with consciousness. I didn’t move at first. The agony was more than I could bear. I cleared my mind to a place of emptiness where I focused on the image of a flame burning in the darkness. That alone eased the worst of the ache. It worked for migraines, so it should work for this too. It took time, but I was able to adjust to this level of pain, at least enough for my mind to slowly work through my disjointed thoughts.

I began to list the things I knew to be true. I was curled up on a wooden floor. It was rough and slightly damp under me. I was not wearing my clothes. The floor wobbled below me. At first, I thought it was just the pain, but it had a rhythm, like laying on my parents’ water bed when I was little.

 _Great,_ I thought. _Lost, kidnapped, **and** naked._ I touched my face. My glasses were gone too. At least, I was covered by a linsey blanket.

I started to remember bits of how I got there:

 _Dropping to my knees, stony sand beneath me as my head spun. A scratchy burlap bag was thrown over my head and rough arms wrapping around me._  I must have screamed. My throat felt raw, but that part was lost to me.

 _Roaring water in my ears and muddled voices beyond my comprehension. Water splashing around my feet as I was dragged, then being lifted onto what must have been a small boat. It rocked, but so did my head, even more as I struggled against my attackers. My arms being pulled hard behind me as they were tightly bound._ My shoulders still hurt.

 _Nausea._ My stomach had started rolling with the first assault, but even my time unconscious had done nothing to stem the queasiness I felt. It waned and ebbed with the pitch of the ship. Just thinking of it made the sickness stronger again. It was a good thing I didn’t know when I had eaten last or I would have been retching as well. I focused on what had come next as I attempt to calm myself.

 _Screeching of metal, loud enough to break through the waves crashing in my head._ The sound made me think of doing laundry? Of hanging laundry on the line! It was the sound of pulleys.  _After that, blinding light, a calloused hand gripping my jaw and a bitter red wine being poured down my throat._ My mouth still had a cottony aftertaste in it. I had tried to spit but the hand held my head back.

 _“Swallow or drown,” the man had growled the commander and I obeyed as the pain started to float away._ Maybe I started to float in the light. Those memories were still hazy and confusing, but they were the last I could recall before I woke up here.

Gingerly, I pushed myself up so I could sit cross-legged. I stayed motionless with my eyes closed for a few long breaths as my head adjust to the new position. I pushed through the throbbing and opened my eyes. There were no windows in this area. Only a scant amount of light filtered in from an opening somewhere. It was dark enough that my headache didn’t increase but bright enough I could make out shapes. The blanket wasn’t a sheet like I had previously thought, rather it was a roughly made dress. I pulled the shift over my head and tugged it down to shield me. It was scratchy and formless, but I felt some dignity returned as I was covered. They must not have been bothered to dress me when they dumped me in this cell.

I slowly looked around at where I was. I was in a cell, wooden from what I could tell, in a larger room with many other cells.  I had about six feet by four feet to myself. There looked to be human-shaped blobs in most of the other cells as well. I squinted, but without my glasses in this light, I couldn’t tell. This ship had been built for captives. I reached out to touch the wall and realized this was a prison or a slave pen. Considering how I had been abducted, I assumed it was the latter. This cage would be my first challenge because I knew that whatever happened to me, I could not stay here at the whim of these slavers.

I gradually slid my way to the edge of the pen. My hands ran along each slat exploring where it joined others and where it met the floor. My eyes were nearly useless now, between the dimness and having to get my face within half a foot to be able to see clearly. Luckily, I could feel everything close to me and could get a decent understanding without my sight.

I made it around two and a half walls when the throbbing in the back of my head became unbearable again. I laid down, cushioning my head with my elbow. I had not found the door, but I did find that the wooden slats were held together with roped instead of nails. I no longer thought the ship had been built for human cargo, rather it had been sloppily retrofitted. I knew I could make use of that, but my head was too clouded from pain to concentrate clearly. My eyes started to water so I closed them and took a few deep breaths. I didn’t have time to cry. I sank back into sleep to ignore the dull ache and threatening tears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to SilentSlayer who has been my beta and puts up with my first person grammar that just won't stay in the same tense!


	3. Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I breathed a song into the air,_  
>  _It fell to earth, I know not where..._  
>  _And the song, from beginning to end,_  
>  _I found again in the heart of a friend._  
>  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I was running late, again. I always sleep through my alarm. As I dig through my closet, trying to find something to wear, I gently push my cat away so I don’t step on him. Mornings are always a rush. I always have had a hard time falling asleep or waking in the morning. Happily, I have figured out my morning routine so that I’m out the door in fifteen minutes, with basic make-up and something to eat in the car. But, as I rushed down the stairs I felt something cold on the back of my neck and fear gripped the pit of my stomach. It was like someone was standing, breathing on my ear. But, no one was there, just my cat at the base of the stairs.

A cold sense of wrongness spread through my body and my head started to spin with the sound of crashing waves. Panic started to rise in my chest, its grip suffocating.

I took a deep breath, counting to eight as I exhaled.

“Good job. Wake up.”

* * *

 The hold of the ship was always dark. It was my aching body that convinced me that I wasn’t dreaming now, as much as I wanted to be. I hurt less than before, but still it overwhelmed most of my senses. Lying silently on the wooden floor was the only way I could think. Each time I woke, the nausea and the pain were a little less, soon I would be able to do something about my situation.

Slowly, I continued my investigation of the pen. I found the door and beside it a bucket of murky water. My stomach rolled at the smell of it and I couldn’t bring myself to drink it at first. I sat against the wall as I tried to count the time I had been here. I knew that a body could go out without food for some time, but only a few days without liquid. So, I held my nose and drank a small mouthful.  I gagged but I got it down. I wanted to drink it quickly, get it over with, but I knew that I had to be gentle on my stomach after being nauseous for so long. As revolting as it was, the water made me feel marginally better.

I found out that the pirates came in pairs to feed us. The first time I didn’t have more energy than to just push myself away from them when they entered. The effects of what had been at least a concussion sapped all my strength. They carried a large bucket, or maybe a pot, and ladled something into a bowl, leaving it by the door of my cage. I wasn’t too upset when I looked at the contents: the thin stew was questionable at best. The blurred forms of the inhabitants of the other pens rolled over each other, fighting for mouthfuls of the soup. I guessed that there were about ten people each of the cells, but it was hard to tell without my glasses.

As unappetising as the soup was, I needed to eat. I needed to be able to function when I got a chance to escape. I ate quickly, trying to hold my breath so I tasted as little as possible. Even though it was greasy and bitter, I kept it down.The wrestling in the other cells had calmed down.  I felt heavy after eating so I laid my head on my arms as I curled into a tight ball, waiting for the feeling to pass.

* * *

 This stretch of road always caught me daydreaming. It was just so simple to get lost in my thoughts or in the song on the radio when the highway was straight and empty. Every day coming home from work, I would catch myself for a moment wondering if I had passed my turn and then the car would go over the ridge and there was the bridge. It was the next road I had to exit on.

Today was the same quick worry that I had missed my road, but the panic was stronger than it should be. I came to the ridge, but instead of seeing the bridge there was a transport truck driving towards me in my lane. Blood pounded in my ears as I immediately swerved to avoid a head-on collision. I watched my car fish-tail then spin around and around. The silence was deafening as the truck plowed into it.

“Interesting place you have here. All kinds of dangers…” A honeyed voice murmured in my ear, making every hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

This wasn’t right, I should be dead, not floating above the crash.

* * *

 I woke, gasping for air from what I hoped was a silent scream. My mouth was dry and cottony. A bitter taste had been left by the stew. It was recently familiar, like the aftertaste of the wine they used to knock me out. It would make sense to drug us constantly, in a way. Each cage must have had a trough, like where I found my stew, even if I couldn’t see them. And they were crammed, at least eight people in each; it was hard to tell when all I could see was people-shaped blobs. I had watched them scramble over each other, fighting for a share of the food. That way the strong would get more of the sedative and the weak would be weaker from lack of food. It was a good way of controlling us and explained why there had been little to know talk from the other slaves-to-be. They were all weak and drugged. I was not much better.

At least I had room to stretch out.

I kept aware of the guards that watched over us, learning their habits as best I could. I would pretend to be asleep the moment I heard or saw any sign of the, but still, I watched them through my lashes. Not that I could see much. But it did cement my feeling that they were drugging the stew. They didn’t seem overly concerned that anyone would try to escape however they measured the amount of stew that went into each “feeding trough” carefully. I also continued to study the cage in between their feeding. I had a lot of time on my hands. The cages were not very sturdy and I was sure that could break them apart. I even started to pick at some of the knots holding it together near the back of my cage where the hull of the ship sloped away and might work as a discreet exit point.

During that time I hadn’t heard any talking from the other slaves-to-be. To be fair, I didn’t talk either. My dreams, however, seemed to come with more clarity and intensity anytime I closed my eyes. Sleep was no longer a comforting thought; they were not good dreams.

I could remember large chunks of dreams each time I slept. Before, at home, I could count on my fingers how many dreams I could remember when I woke. Those too had been nightmares, often ones that repeated. Now they were becoming stronger and stronger.

One of the things that struck me was that the sound always seemed off, almost like they had their own theme music. It was wild and foreboding, although sometimes it could be enchanting. Some dreams I wanted to spend just listening to it before they gave way to nightmares. The music seemed to be alive and tangible in the air of my dreams. Moreover, what I did had an effect on the melody, if you could call it that.

I felt like I must be going insane stuck in this dark cage because even after I woke, I was starting to hear it too. It was softer, but the gentle hum of harmony was still lingering in the air.

* * *

 The lake lapped gently along the rocky beach at my feet. The wind blew warm against my face. A feeling of peace welled up in my chest as realized I was at the summer camp I grew up at. No matter what life threw at me this was a place was a piece of home. I know many others have felt the same way about this place.

I caught a hint of music drifting down from the bluff behind me. I turned to climb the old steep wooden stairs that had long since been replaced with the wider ramp farther down the beach. I don’t know if I should describe it as music, really. It was more harmonies than a simple melody. While it seemed a far distance off, it also hung in every inch of air. I stood halfway up the stairs and just listened, my eyes unfocused with the concentration on the sound.

The more I thought about it, the more I was sure that the music had always been there, but it didn’t belong at camp. The harmonies were more coherent than the normal chattering of birds, wind in the trees and waves on the rocks. I still couldn’t quite put my finger on what melody held the harmonies together, though. Like a thought almost remembered.

At the top of the stair, something brushed against my leg and forced my focus away from the sound. It was a cat, a very large siamese cat with his tail held high like a flag as he rubbed against my knee. I bent down to stroke it, its colour astounding me. The few red-points I had ever met had been a soft orange, not the brick red of this lovely creature.

“Aren’t you the most majestic creature?...” I nearly choked at it looked up at me. Its eyes were far too blue even for a siamese, almost like liquid sapphire with hints of silver. A damned Karsite Firecat had walked out of the pages of a book and was now purring against my hand.

“I am, of course! It is good of you to notice,” the cat purred.

I sat down in the cool grass, staring at the animal. It should surprise me that it spoke, but all I could think of was that I had heard that voice before. Somehow it felt comforting.

“What is your name?”

“Now, that is a telling question.” The cat sat facing me, its tail wrapping gracefully around its body. “You could have asked who I am, or what I am. You are new around here, yes? Your ability to shake off fear and despair in a situation like yours; it required investigation.” The purring never stopped even when it started to wash its face.

“You still haven’t answered my question.” I couldn’t stop from smiling. It was a cat to the core even if it was some magical creature. And truly, I don’t think there has ever been a time that I did not smile at a purring cat.

There was a long pause as it continued its grooming before it stopped and looked me straight in the eyes. “You may call me Elpie. That will suit. What is your name?”

I grinned a bit as fairy tales came flooding into my thoughts and so I followed its lead, “You may call me Mea.” _Strong and steadfast._ That was who I needed to be right now.

“Our time is growing short, however, I will help you. I wouldn't be able to watch you if you didn't survive, now would I?” The cat headbutted my chest as I sat in the cool grass.

* * *

 The wood was rough under my cheek and the stench of unwashed bodies filled my nose, making me gag. However, for the first time since I had been on this ship, I woke up refreshed. Even the music that seemed to linger after my dream was calming, instead of the remnant of nightmares.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took me forever to write and there was more than one rewrite. Also, my character rebelled against me. She was originally a self-insert but it took only three chapters for her to become her own person. That's part of the need for rewrites. Again, feedback is welcome. I would love to hear what you think of what might happen next.


End file.
